Choosing Contentment

Happy Monday morning! I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend! It was a fairly busy one for me, but it was all good. The weekend ended on a fairly chaotic note as four small grandchildren went on an Easter egg hunt that was confined to the living room and dining room of my daughter's house. There was a lot of noise and excitement, and one of the twins was content to just eat what she found, on the spot, rather than put it in her basket and look for more. We kept having to point out more things for her to find and encouraging her to keep looking. She had a lot of fun, but was definitely not into the "finding" as much as the others (especially the two oldest granddaughters).

You know, that's not such a bad thing. What I saw in Olivia was contentment with what she had and where she was in that moment. She was thoroughly enjoying the candy she had in her mouth, but we hardly gave her time to enjoy it because we were urging her to look for something else.

That is so typical of how most of us (and I mean "us"!) live our lives. We get so busy looking for that next thing, hoarding everything in our basket to enjoy later, instead of stopping and appreciating the moment we're in.

Stopping and enjoying the moment we're in is challenging when we don't particularly like the moment we're in. That is certainly true for this weight loss journey :-). I liked what it was doing for my body and my health, but it was a challenge for me to stay focused and find contentment in the moment. I was focused, and I needed to be, on my goal, but sometimes I was so focused on looking ahead that I was in danger of missing what was happening at the time.

This weight loss journey is about so much more than just losing weight and getting healthy, as important as that is. It's also about changing our hearts and minds in how we relate to food, and how we use (or misuse) food to deal with the stuff of life. If we don't change our relationship with food in a very fundamental way, this will ultimately become another diet and we'll find ourselves reverting to toxic former patterns.

Changing our we relate to food requires us to sometimes shift our focus from "tomorrow" so we can reflect and evaluate on "today." I was challenged to find contentment in the "today" of my journey, and eventually, to my amazement, I did, and it made all the difference.

So my encouragement to you today is to choose contentment in today's journey - whether you're just beginning, somewhere in the middle, or closing in on your goal. Being content with today can be a key factor in helping you stay on plan today.

Who's with me today? :-)